


I Dreamed A Dream

by im_ridiculous



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, Earn Your Happy Ending, Eventual Happy Ending, clearly I still have absolutely no idea how to tag, in which I EVENTUALLY revert to my true fluffy form... EVENTUALLY, look i was in my feels i don't even know, post-Sochi, sad drunk Scott, started with six tweets and now we here, very angry Tessa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-05-20 12:04:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14894313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/im_ridiculous/pseuds/im_ridiculous
Summary: Imagine, if you will, post-Sochi.Now imagine that instead of going to Artistry on Ice and skating to ‘Into the Mystic’, they went to Fantasy on Ice in Japan and were forced to skate to ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ in the middle of the 2014 breakdown.Yeah, so... here's a fic about that. And about the long road back.Full disclosure: here be angst dragons.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know what to tell you. Watching them skate to ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ made me feel melodramatic. Then, before I knew it, six emo tweets turned into plot bunnies and here I am. 
> 
> I don’t know what this is. I think it’s a one-shot, but I’m craving a resolution. I’m craving a resolution, but I don’t know what that resolution looks like. I may write it, but - and I mean this seriously - I might not. This might be all there is.
> 
> (ETA... Narrator: It was not all there is.
> 
> Be warned, things get pretty bad before they get better. Read at your own risk.
> 
> Unless you're Tessa or Scott, in which case... for the love of god - FOR THE LOVE OF GOD - please do not read it at all.)

The Olympics came and went in a howl of heartbreak and fury.

It didn’t matter that they deserved to win, it didn’t matter that Canada was still behind them.

They were betrayed.

By their sport, by their hearts, by the woman in whom they had placed their trust, they were betrayed. They were alone. For the first time in a long time they were, each of them, alone.

Tight ropes of loyalty and necessity that bound them as allies through the long campaign had finally stretched too far.

A long war of attrition was over, after Carmen and Cassandra and _she’s a woman, Scott, look at her like one, touch her like one_ , as if that had ever been the problem.

Now she stood amid the wreckage, and it was painfully clear that out of want, out of hopeless expectation, out of frustration and disappointment, they had torn themselves apart.

In her mind, she dreamed an abandoned Shakespearean battlefield of Tessa-and-Scott. She saw them in the piles of the dying and the dead, in the circling birds and the curling smoke, and in the fallen standards, faded and fraying, flapping ragged in the wind.

She’d earned the melodrama, she thought. She was entitled to it, alone in her mind, where no-one else could see.

She was supposed to be out there, beyond, fulfilling her potential, but it was all she could do to move forward. Everyone expected: expected her to be gracious, expected her to shine, expected them to live happily ever after. They expected, and expected, and _expected_ things of her, while the dark nothing of What Comes Next loomed ever closer, just outside her peripheral vision.

She had stated her purpose: _go to school, find out who I am without us_. She had wanted this, needed it, so it had to be fine. It was fine. She was fine. Everything was fine.

He had someone else.

Suddenly, there was someone else.

They’d fought, in Sochi. He’d reached for her to comfort and be comforted and she’d tried to explain, she really had, about the expectation, and the dark nothing, and the mess in her head. But it had all come out wrong and he’d just reacted, the way he did when he was hurt. And she had hurt him, she knew that, but she just thought there was time. She thought he would give her that much, after everything.

He hadn’t. He hadn’t even waited the night. And that’s when she knew exactly what she was worth to him. What they were really worth, once the performance, and the dance-hold intimacy, and the competitive goal-setting were stripped away. And then suddenly there was someone else.

She arrived and stuck fast, this girl, this perfect-seeming someone, with him acting like it was serious. So she acted that way too, because _they were fine and they were best friends_ , and _she was fine and really enjoying new challenges_ , and _he was having fun and just enjoying life after all the training,_  and apparently they were going to pretend that this was the way it was always supposed to go.

It was fine. They were fine.

So what if she’d had a dream? So what if she’d planned it out and played it out in her mind, clear as day? Who cares if they were supposed to win gold, and he was supposed to give her space and wait while she straightened her head out, before they got their happily ever after? What were happily-ever-afters, anyway, but lies told to children who didn’t know any better? But nonetheless, she did _have_ a dream, and she had _made_ a plan, and somehow she’d still ended up watching her life as if it were someone else’s, chanting over and over, like a mantra, like she could stop it: ‘ _this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong’._

But also, it was fine.

Because she was fine. Because the dangerous admission that she was not fine - that nothing, actually, was fine - was not to be spoken aloud. Not even alone in her bed, late at night, whispered softer than breath. Not even then.

Because she was fine.

Because they were Canada’s sweethearts and there were interviews and there were invitations and there were bills to pay.

Because there was a tour across Canada, to say thank you. Because he looked right through her but they still had to skate to _Stay_ and somehow she had to remain upright. Because he touched her like she was poison while Pink kept telling her to _try_ , in front of thousands of people who’d paid good money to see them. She didn’t just worry it might be ruined, she knew it for sure. But she had to be fine.

She had to be, because it hurt, viscerally, both the skating with him and the thought of not skating with him. Like her legs had hurt. Like she was pressing into an open wound just to prove how much pain she could stand. And she would withstand it. She could. And if she had to, she thought, vicious and wild, then he had to. She wanted him to hurt like she hurt, and she wanted to know it. She needed him to show her, like he always had before, and it drove her mad that he had somehow locked it all down after that night in Sochi. She knew every twitch in his face, every tell of his body, every hint of a whisper from his volatile heart… and all she could read in him now was silence. She would not stand for it. She wanted to grab him and shake him and scream _look at me, touch me, want me so that I can tell you I don’t want you._

So above all, above everything, she had to be fine so she could skate with him. Because whether he liked it or not, whether he wanted it or not, whether he knew it or not… out on the ice he was hers, still. She had not agreed to give him up. She had never renounced her claim and she did not renounce it. She would not, even if she had to hurt herself in the process.

And so she said yes to Fantasy on Ice.

* * *

 

They arrive in Japan, bitter and bruised, to be whisked straight into a meeting with their delighted choreographer.

They sink onto hard plastic chairs, inches from each other, but she can feel his distraction. His mind is away, back across the Pacific and halfway across Canada. He still won’t look her in the eye. It’s been days.

She affixes her press conference smile.

“The singer! She has the perfect song!” the choreographer chirps, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “It’s dramatic - in fact I would even say operatic. It will be perfect!"

She sits up straighter, attentive, like the professional she is. He slumps sceptically beside her.

“ _I Dreamed A Dream_! From _Les Miserables_!” the choreographer claps excitedly. “Perfect, yes?!”

She barks out a laugh into the silence that follows; blunt and bile-filled.

Because, of course. Because, perfect.

He doesn’t even flinch. He never appreciated the classics the way she did. He doesn’t get it, yet.

“Of course, the story of the piece,” the choreographer babbles excitedly, scrolling to the right place in his phone before plugging it into some speakers and tapping play, “is one of lost love, of betrayal.”

Scott shifts in his seat, uncrossing and re-crossing his arms.

“The woman who loved, desperately, is abandoned by the man she chose, and he leaves her ruined, penniless, and broken-hearted, to raise their illegitimate child alone.”

He exhales, and the inward breath catches. The music starts. She keeps her spine straight and her eyes fixed on her hands, twisted tight together in her lap.

“It is sad, yes, but so beautiful! I have some ideas, of course. But I welcome your thoughts, also,” the choreographer concludes, graciously, inclining his head toward them.

The music unfolds. With every note, every word, she can feel him coil tighter and tighter into himself, tension thrumming through him, until every cell in his body is emanating unease.

She stares straight ahead, and stays perfectly still, but all the same... _Signs of life, Scott? At long last?_ It feels like a victory.

The choreographer talks about ideas and maps out steps, and makes a plan to reconvene that afternoon on the ice. The moment the meeting is over, he pushes out of his chair and through the door, leaving her stammering her thanks and offering excuses and rushing out after him, out of habit. She calls his name at his retreating back and he stops, without turning around.

 _Tell me you’re not alright_ , she thinks, as she asks if he is. _Tell me you feel it. Show me you feel every note, every line, every beat of betrayal_.

He turns his head just far enough to drop his chin to his right shoulder. She can barely hear him when he speaks.

“It’ll be fine, Tess. We’ll be fine.”

And then he’s gone.

***

They have a day and a half to learn the choreography, simple steps really, a reworking of old programs. Not hard to master, and no real need to talk. So they don’t. They practice mostly without music, counting out the steps in their heads as their blades cut the silence.

She’s sure he hates it, because he must. There are signs, but she doesn’t know. He doesn’t sing to himself as they skate, even though she knows he knows the lyrics by now. He won’t look her in the eye as they spin, or when he sets her back down on the ice. His cold-blooded touch chills her to her bones, but his hands are sure, even now, despite everything. It’s not enough. She needs to see it hurts. She needs to know.

So she wears the green dress.

“See, I told you,” he’d whispered once, too close, looking like he wanted to tear it off her, “ _Kapow_.”

He might have done it if she’d let him, with his girlfriend waiting back at the hotel. But she’d wanted him to choose her, not cheat with her, and in any case none of that could happen before the Olympics. That green dress could cost them everything, she’d thought, stupidly. So she put it away and had a new one made, _because the Olympic costume should be special_ , she’d said. Not that it mattered anyway, in the end.

She slips it over her head on opening night, smoothing out the emerald fabric and checking her makeup. Perfect.

He’s waiting in the wings as their cue nears, and reaches automatically behind him when he hears her approach. She doesn’t take his hand, so he turns, his expression freezing when he registers what she’s wearing.

Her stomach flips. _That’s it, Moir. Come on._

Hands fisting at his sides, jaw tense and twitching, his eyes gleam black in the half-light, raking up her body the way his hands used to, over the curve of her hips, the small swell of her chest, the sweep of her neck, halting somewhere over her left ear.

Her heart clenches, out of desire or shame, she honestly couldn’t say. _Look me in the eye, you coward_ , it dares him _. Show me something._

Then the announcer is calling their names and the stage manager bustles into the wings, gesturing for them to take the ice.

Jolted, he holds out his hand and this time she takes it, not in a dance hold, but lacing their fingers together. With a sharp inhalation, the wall comes down and his eyes snap to hers. _Finally_. Her heart cries out in victory. _There you are._ And it’s all there, the hurt and the anger, and confusion too. And desire, always desire, dark and dangerous and spiralling.

His eyes never leave hers, as the spotlight draws them to their opening position.

He grasps her hips, pulls her backwards into him, and holds; his lips grazing her ear, his breath hot on her cheek.

“Is this what you want, Tessa?” She feels the words more than she hears them. They shudder through her like a tremor through bedrock. “Is this how you want me?”

The air is suddenly solid. It fills her lungs and expands and she can’t breathe and he is much too close.

The music begins, and too late - much too late - she realises what she forgot, that she is his, too. She hasn’t won. She isn’t fine. There is no victory here, and she’s gambled absolutely everything.

They start to move as the singer sings of dreams made and wasted, of youth and its folly, and all she can see is him: _Scott at nine, shy for once in his life, being told to take her hand; Scott at fifteen, overprotective, scaring off the other boys then ruffling her hair and calling her ‘kiddo’; Scott at sixteen, excited and hopeful, telling her they were going to the Olympics someday soon._

The song recounts its tale of hope dashed, of betrayal and shame, and still his eyes never leave hers. _Scott at seventeen, moody, putting her down quickly and skating away from her and getting angry at her for no good reason; Scott at twenty, holding her hips and her gaze, and almost, almost closing the distance between them; Scott at twenty-one, absent and silent, breaking her heart_.

A summer reprieve, and endless wonder, and he lifts her and flips her and puts her safe back on the ice. _Scott at twenty-two, beside her, on the podium, by her hospital bed, holding her hand_.

The fall and the Fall, the want and the hopeless expectation, the dream that was shadow and dust all along. _Scott at twenty-five, Carmen and Cassandra and the beginning of the end; Scott at twenty-six, storming away from her in Sochi, dancing at Canada House that night with a pretty blonde curler who appeared out of nowhere and stuck; Scott, always, everywhere, woven into everything around and within her_.

It’s too much. She cannot withstand it. There are storms she cannot weather, after all. She’d had a dream. She’d had a plan. She had stated her purpose and set off in search of it. But it wasn’t enough, and it wasn’t fine, and it was all supposed to be so different. And it hurts, beyond counting, out of time and out of mind. And she isn't fine. Nothing is fine, at all.

She is touch and sensation and movement and pain, her world condensed to his strong hands, all over her; to his dark eyes, seeing right into her, and aching with something she can’t define that goes so far beyond hurt that she wants to cry, bitterly, to think she ever wanted to see it. She wasn’t ready for this. This was a terrible, shattering mistake.

She remembers, vaguely and just in time, that she’s supposed to skate away from him, that they’re supposed to skate away from each other, to end the piece at opposite ends of the ice.

But he’s clinging to her as the moment of separation arrives, too tight, and she lets him. She can’t move. She can barely hold herself up. He spins her around to face him, his eyes desperate and wild and inches from hers.

“Just say it, Tessa,” he grits out, right there in the middle of the ice, as the music plays out what should have been the last steps of the program. “For once in your life, just say what you feel.”

She stares back at him, utterly speechless, her hands braced against his chest as the spotlight fades out. He’s so close, his nose touching hers, nostrils flaring. His open mouth is no distance from hers at all, his breath hot on her face and his shoulders heaving. His eyes flicker to her lips.

“Do it.” He almost spits out the challenge.

Her lungs, acting on their own, suck in a sharp breath in anticipation. Her tongue darts out to lick her lips, and her fingers slide up to dig into the muscled flesh of his shoulders for better purchase.

And for just a moment they are suspended, coiled tight together, like a snake before the strike.

Then something hitches in the back of her throat, in the deepest chamber of her heart, and the moment shatters around her like plate glass.

The lights come up and she shoves herself backwards. His face falls, then recovers, the wall hastily re-erected and his new mask firmly back in place. She spins, unsteady, and bows without touching him. She turns to skate off into the darkness, and doesn’t look back.

In her mind, she dreams again of the battlefield of Tessa-and-Scott, joining the birds as they turn lazy circles in the sky.

The dying in their piles are still at last; the silence rings like a bell.

The fallen standards, tattered beyond recognition, tear away from their spears in the wind as she watches.

They float upwards with the smoke on hot currents in the air, higher and higher, until they are out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I had some things to work through. Ahem. I am very sorry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She is lost and drifting, and he’s posing for pictures. He says he’s happy. She doesn’t have the strength to carry it for both of them, and she is so angry at him. She lets him lie, and she lets them both believe it.
> 
> And so it’s months, in the end, before she sees it for herself."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told ya I craved a resolution. It's only taken four months to pull us a little closer to one...
> 
> I've been chipping away at parts two and three of this thing more or less this whole time. I'm not lying when I say I'm a slow and desperately inconsistent writer... Anyway. Hopefully one or two of the handful of people who read the first bit of this might like where this goes... But a warning, we're still very much in the 'earning' part of the 'earn your happy ending' tag, for now.
> 
> Part three is already half written, but like I said... slow and inconsistent. Still. I'm confident I'll get there. Hopefully faster than four months this time.

They limp home to London.

Her mother takes one look at her in the airport arrivals hall, and then takes matters into her own hands.

And that’s how she finds herself, a hot chocolate and a scalding shower later, lying in the narrow bed that hasn’t been properly hers since she was barely thirteen, staring at the ceiling in the dark.

She wishes she could cry. She used to, when she was small, when her feelings were big and uncomplicated. She'd storm in here and throw herself down on the mattress and sob into the pillows until her tears ran to dust.

But she learned long ago to lock all that down, to be the equilibrium to his unpredictable fire, to protect herself. She can count on one hand the number of times she’s really wept since she was fifteen.

She lies there in the silence, trying not to think about all the times before: sixteen and feeling like they’d missed the Olympics forever. Twenty-three and losing a hometown world championship and feeling somehow like that was still only half of what she didn’t have.

Nineteen, home for the surgery, her legs in agony and their dream hanging over her head like a blade.

He’d hugged her tight before she left him that night, uncharacteristically seriously, and told her it was all going to be alright.

She’d swallowed hard, the words stuck solid in her throat. _What if it’s not. What if we wake up in a couple of days and it’s all over._

He had seen right through her, and understood anyway. He’d pulled her tighter into his arms, the way he had taken to doing. She liked it. It felt like home and him and the way things were supposed to be. It made it harder to tune out the voice she’d conditioned herself to ignore, the one in the back of her head that whispered more insistently than ever, _something is happening, this is something, this is something and it is happening now_.

He’d cradled the back of her head, so gently, as if that was the part of her that ached. His lips moved against her ear like a kiss. “It’s not going to happen, kiddo. I’m here. Everything's going to be okay. I promise.”

She had crumbled then, overwhelmed by wracking sobs she’d held at bay for days, for months, through every weak moment since her legs started turning against them and she had decided to bear it alone. She had wept silent juddering tears into his chest, messy and broken. And he’d just held her, rubbing slow circles on her back and murmuring softly.  _It’s all going to be okay._ _I promise I promise I promise_.

She’d managed to choke it out eventually: what if it wasn’t? What if he had to find someone else?

“I won’t.” He’d shaken his head, fierce, his arms still tight around her. “I won’t. You’re going to be fine. But if you’re... _if_ you can’t skate, then... I don’t skate. I don’t wanna skate. It’s you and me, that’s the whole point. So, _if_ , then...”

He shook his head again and shrugged, casting around for a made-up future, one he’d never even bothered to contemplate before.

“I don’t know…. we’ll come home. We’ll come home, and we’ll… I’ll... play hockey and get a job, and maybe help mom coach or something. And you’ll go to college and be brilliant, and we’ll be with our friends and our families and just do normal stuff, that normal people do.”

He’d breathed in, deep and ragged, and exhaled. She felt him deflate against her.

“I don’t know, Tess,” he’d whispered into her hair. “We’d be okay. I promise.”

She’d needed to believe him and so she had let herself believe him.

She had ignored the catch in his voice, the thud of his heart, the shake of his hand on her back; all the warning signs that screamed as loud as sirens that he was terrified too, down to his bones, under layers of cocky bravado, in the far hidden corners of his soft heart.

But she was lost and drifting. She simply didn’t have the strength to carry it for both of them, and he was trying so hard. So she let him lie, and she let them both believe it.

And that night she dreamed of a different life, where the universe glitched just slightly to the right, and they never met. Where she was never a dancer or a skater, and her legs had never had to work hard enough to hurt, and none of it had ever happened.

Maybe instead there was a high school graduation; an early-summer evening and a huge party in the field beside the old Ilderton rink where maybe Jordan took a couple lessons when they were kids.

Maybe she and her friends packed into a car and drove out of town, and she wound down the window to feel the warm air on her face, and closed her eyes against the sinking sun and smiled as her friends sang loud and out of key along with the radio.

Later, when a comfortable chill set in, maybe she wandered over to the warmth of the firepit and let the party spin around her while she watched the timber crack and spark, embers shooting skyward like fireflies in the darkness.

And maybe, while she stood there, she saw that cocky hockey boy, the one with the wide smile and the kind eyes who she’d seen sort of generally around, the way you did in a couple of small conjoined towns like theirs. And maybe he came and pulled a beer out of the cooler beside her. And maybe he hesitated and then reached back down to pull out a second bottle, and tentatively offered it to her.

And maybe she took it, and maybe he smiled wider and tipped the neck of his bottle to hers with a clink and held out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Scott.” And maybe she noticed how her own hand fit perfectly in his. And maybe her whole life might have been completely different and yet somehow fundamentally the same.

She’d gone off to surgery the next morning with his promises still looping in her heart.

It was two months before they spoke again.

Now, home from Japan, lying wrung out and stretched thin on the narrow mattress, she runs through the memories of all the other times before, and of this time, now.

She had felt bereft, before. Lost and frustrated, too. But at least those feelings were solid. She had been able to run her hands over their edges and make out the shape of them. She could call them by name.

What does it say about her, she wonders, that the one person into whom she poured everything of herself, turned out not to know her at all? She feels somehow only half real, disconcerted that she could have been so wrong about him, and them, and everything.

She is unmoored and rudderless. She can’t find the edges of her anger or her hurt, can’t grapple with them or wrangle them into something she can define or contain. But bone deep, she feels it. Feels… something.

Yet for all that, there is also... a numbness. There is absolutely nothing at all.

For the first time her horizon is completely empty. There is only an abstract kind of darkness, with no forward or backward, no compelling landmark to aim for alone or together, no goal that might pull them back into orbit around each other. There is only potent and hopeless expectation, the gaping hole of his absence, and a burning fury that, for all its heat, still isn’t nearly enough to shake her paralysis.

She lies there in the greying gloom, stubbornly dry-eyed and staring at the ceiling, and she thinks of all the other times before and of this time now. She accepts the inevitable conclusion.

This is the worst time.

“And that,” she whispers to noone, “is really saying something.”

 

* * *

 

They exist in an uncomfortable and unspoken truce.

They paint on their faces for appearances and interviews and shows, and they pretend.

The world adjusts around them.

Her friends give up trying to update her on the latest stories about him, passed mouth to mouth around town. Her mother and sister think their worried glances go unnoticed, but they stop asking about him. About them. Eventually, they stop asking.

Ryan calls to say he’ll be in Toronto, and she agrees to a drink and to dinner and to see where the night takes them. She lets the night take them, and then she lets it happen again. She lets it keep happening. It passes the time.

She avoids Alma, who doesn’t deserve it, and rejects her mom’s invitations to join the two of them for coffee, or for an afternoon walk, or for a long overdue catch-up. “But give her my love?” she calls over her shoulder, as she rushes off to another very urgent appointment she just remembered all of a sudden, what a shame.

She adjusts the expectation by sheer force of will, whether the world wants to rethink them or not. Virtue cannot exorcise Moir from her life, but Tessa can absolutely chip away Scott’s presence from hers. They don’t speak unless they have to. When they do, he says he’s happy. Sometimes he even looks it. She hopes he’s lying.

She perfects her press conference smile, and armour-plates her interview laugh. She strangles every urge to text him something funny, every instinct to call him to talk about her day and ask about his, every early-morning twinge to step out onto some ice somewhere with her hand in his. She hides her heart from him the way she once hid her legs. She refuses to give him the satisfaction.

Sometimes the deprivation feels self-defeating, and on those days she has to remind herself that she is furious with him and why. Sometimes the grief slices through her without warning and takes her breath away, and on those days his absence feels like a wound that will never heal. Every day there is the ache and the exhaustion, resonating in the deepest part of her, sometimes louder and sometimes softer, but always there.

Summer passes, and the rumours start.

He smiles in the pictures, standing alongside his someone. She hears the whispers that he isn’t coping, and ignores them. She doesn’t ask. She hopes they’re true and hates herself for it. She hopes all the same.

She signs endorsements and does photoshoots and sometimes they even make her happy. She starts at school and tries and fails to be _just Tessa_ , with no Olympic title and no national narrative and absolutely no joined-at-the-hip written-in-the-stars skating partner. She gets better at not flinching whenever someone asks about him. They always ask about him, if anyone is brave enough to talk to her at all.

She smiles her press conference smile and talks about how much she’s enjoying expanding her horizons through university life. She feels every day as if she’s standing on the dock watching that boat sail steadily towards that horizon without her. She fills her hours with busy, and realises that what she actually misses is purposeful. She starts saying yes to everything, and everything starts to feel like nothing at all.

The stories of his misadventures come thicker and faster. _You shoulda seen Scotty on Saturday night, he was hilarious! … I saw Scott out again on Sunday after that pickup game, looks like he’s enjoying retirement! … Apparently Danny had to go drag him out of Joe’s at 2am after he got cut off, and he was_ not _happy about it. … His poor mother. You hear she was driving around looking for him on Friday morning after he didn’t come home? … He’s in trouble ... He’s struggling ... He’s spiralling ... Has Tessa spoken to him recently?_

She fields questions about them and reminds herself that he is not her problem, that he made himself someone else’s problem. They are very different people building very different lives, she says. She replays that night in her head, over and over, and makes herself remember that she chose this, and he betrayed her because of it. She chose this, and so it has to be fine.

The harder she tries to pull her life into formation, the more it feels like it’s spinning out of control. She joins Instagram and curates her existence into tiny, controllable squares, allowing him precisely the space she chooses to give and no more.

In a restaurant with friends one night, on just the far side of tipsy, she stares at a neon sign buzzing yellow on the wall: _LOVE ME TIL I’M ME AGAIN_. And she thinks,  _THAT, you asshole. Was that really so much to ask?_

She snaps a picture and posts it one cocktail later, then tries not to wonder whether he’s seen it. His own social media remains silent but he is on everyone else’s. She is lost and drifting, and he’s posing for pictures. He says he’s happy.

She doesn’t have the strength to carry it for both of them, and she is so angry at him.

She lets him lie, and she lets them both believe it.

And so it’s months, in the end, before she sees it for herself.

 

* * *

 

It’s a nice enough bar, but casual. Neutral enough for a casual meeting of two casual business partners at a old mutual friend’s casual birthday drinks on a casual Friday night.

An hour in and he’s already drunk.

She averts her eyes, her lips pressed tight in irritation. But it’s not like he has to successfully lift her anytime soon, and they’re not returning to competition anyway, and he is so far from being her problem anymore… She breathes in a steady breath, releases it, turns away from him and smiles.

He keeps drinking.

A few hours later and everyone’s on the dance floor. He’s laughing and singing all the words and refusing to look at her. His someone is a province away. Then suddenly he stumbles and almost falls, held up at the last by his friends who throw up a whooping cheer and set him on his feet. He holds his arms aloft as if in victory.

That’s when she feels them; the tight ropes of loyalty and necessity that had bound them together for so long, bonds she had imagined broken and discarded, tugging now at something uncomfortably close to her heart. She declines a ride home and switches to water. She finds a perch in the corner, and doesn’t really think about why.

The barman cuts him off, but his buddies keep his glass filled. Two shots later and he’s well on the downhill slide from life of the party to problematic menace, and she hasn’t seen him like this since… she’s never seen him like this.

 _But you’ve seen it now_ , that voice starts up again. _You can’t unsee it_.

And she can’t. She can’t unsee it and she can’t believe the lie, not anymore, not when the palpable fact of his unhappiness is written like a buzzing neon sign across his face in a way that makes him somehow hard to recognise, and somehow just exactly the boy who’d held her while she cried, who told her everything was going to be okay.

She wrenches her eyes from the dancefloor, and focuses on the wooden floor at her feet. She counts the nails in the timber and takes a deep, unsteady breath. None of this was supposed to be her problem. It can’t be her problem. She can't carry it for both of them this time, she just… She can’t.

She makes her decision, grabs her bag, slips off her stool, turns to leave, and slams straight into his chest.

She braces her hands automatically against him and looks up into bloodshot hazel eyes that try to focus on hers. He grabs hold of her shoulders, swaying dangerously.

“Hey, where you goin’? Dance wi’ me.”

She pushes herself backwards and he lurches, knees almost buckling beneath him.

“You can’t dance, Scott. You can barely stand.”

“Canssso,” he slurs, and waggles his finger in an exaggerated point next to his head as it nods forward. As if, in his mind, he’s making an unassailable closing argument. “Always danced wi’ me. Tess. We did. Tess ‘n’ me” His eyes are glazed over, like he’s already forgotten she’s even there.

And just like that, she realises it’s gone. The rage.

She’s sad and scared and exhausted, certainly. She thinks she might even still be very angry. But the viper instinct, the need to plumb the depths of her own hurt and to hurt him in return, it’s just... It’s just gone.

In its place is a gaping grief, for what’s become of them, and of all they’d dreamed and built together, now spilled like so much cheap beer on a sticky bar floor in Ilderton. As if the universe had glitched, and they’d never left. As if none of it ever happened at all.

She acts on instinct and reaches out to grab his arm, stopping and steadying him, and bringing her other hand to his face.

“Scott. Scotty - look at me. It’s Tess. Are you with me?”

He laughs at someone over her shoulder, and she grasps his jaw between her thumb and forefinger, pulling his face in line with hers. “Scott, look at me.” His eyes slide over hers and he blinks hard, trying to focus. She seizes her opportunity.

“Why don’t I get you home, eh? It’s been a fun night, but let’s get you home.”

“No I’on’ wanna.” He makes to move, but she holds tight. He looks down at where she’s gripping his forearm, brow furrowed, as if he can’t quite work out why he’s unable to pull it away.

“Yeah, I think you should though. Come on, I’ll take you.”

And then he acts out of instinct, too, drunk and angry and confused.

“Issaidno,” he growls, and wrenches away from her. He’s still strong, for all his inebriation and evaporating conditioning, and when he pulls and she holds on, they go tipping sideways. He loses his balance altogether, knocking over her stool and crashing into the wall, and sliding down against it under the high table, pulling her down on top of him. They hit the floor with a thud.

A drunk chorus of cheers and applause erupts around them and then the drinking just carries on as if nothing happened, as if they fell out of the party altogether and not just out of sight.

His head lolls to the side as he sits slumped against the wall. She scrambles off him to kneel beside him instead, and cups his face in her hand. “Scott? Can you open your eyes for me?”

When he does, he finally seems to register who she is.

“Hi,” he slurs, looking around at no-one and pointing sloppily back at her. “Isss Tess. T’s ‘ere.”

“Yeah, I’m here,” she says softly. “I’m here now.”

She hasn’t heard herself use that voice in a long, long time.

It’s the voice of kiss and cry comfort and commiseration after a bad skate, and solid solidarity after a earful from Marina, and equilibrium evening out fire. It’s his. It’s them.

And when he smiles back at her, she curses herself and him and everything and everyone she has ever known. But she cannot unsee it.

“What’re you doing Scott? What is this?”

“I’m hav’n fun,” he tells her, as if it’s obvious.

“Yeah, I don’t think you are though.” His brow furrows again, as if it’s taking a while for her words to travel from his ears to his brain. She’s about to try again, when he grits out, low and urgent, slurred but serious:

“You don’ know. You don’ know me. You don’ care, and you don’ wan’ us.”

It feels like a slap.

“Thas wha’ youssaid. You, without us. ‘I’m not even sure I like who I am wi’ you, Scotty.’ Tha’ was you.” He’s pointing at her again.

And she knows, she _knows_ that this is the worst possible time to finally have this conversation, but for just a moment the anger flames bright in her chest before she can tamp it back down.

“Scott, come on, that’s not what I- and _you_ were the one who-” She cuts herself off, inhaling sharply.

“Okay, you know what?” She brings her fingers to her temples, closes her eyes and breathes, willing her heart rate to slow down. “We’re not doing this right now.”

“You ‘n’ me,” he cuts across her. “Thas wha’ i’was always s’posda be, Tess. You ‘n’ me.”

And suddenly his face is open to her, expectant and hurt. She can actually see him in there, for the first time in months. It breaks what’s left of her heart.

“ _You_ left _me_ , Scotty,” she shrugs helplessly, and it’s not an accusation, not there with him unravelling in front of her. It’s just a reminder, a statement of fact. That position is filled.

“It isn’t you and me anymore. You’ve… you’ve got Kaitlyn. What would she say if she saw you like this, huh? It’s you and her. You chose her. Remember?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I don’ remember. I don’..” He looks suddenly confused, like she just told him the sky is red. “Why isn’it you ‘n’ me?”

Her heart drops.

“Okay, please don’t do this to me, Scott. Not here. Not like this.”

She’s pleading and she doesn’t care. Not now. He doesn’t get to turn back into her Scott now, not drunk on a bar floor in Ilderton. This doesn't get to be the first time they talk about what happened. She's not ready. She still doesn't know how to explain it. She can't-

His head snaps up, brow furrowed, like he heard her thinking.

“Why didn’ you wan’ me, Tess?” And it’s not an accusation either, not asked with malice or anger. It’s a plea, and a confirmation.

She broke his heart.

She knew she did, really. In her heart of hearts, she knew. She knew it the moment it happened, the moment that the words were out of her mouth and his face fell and he staggered back from her as if she’d slapped him. She knew it the moment she decided not to run after him, when she should have gone to him and held him and kissed him and told him she was sorry and that she wanted to take it all back and when she still could have stopped him going to Canada House and meeting a pretty blonde curler who appeared out of nowhere and stuck.

But she didn’t. She’d decided to give him the night to cool off, and to give herself time to formulate a better explanation. And then she woke up and went looking for him at breakfast and there was someone else.

And she’d been so angry at him for running so far so fast. She'd been so hurt that he turned right around and found someone new, like replacing her was nothing at all. She’d been so furious at him for not understanding, for not seeing through what she said to what she meant like he normally did, right when she needed him to do it the most. She just couldn’t believe that after everything they’d been through and after everything they’d been to each other, he didn’t give her time or the benefit of the doubt. She simply couldn’t fathom how he didn’t get it, how he didn’t get _her_. She hated him so much for refusing to love her til she was her again.

She broke them, she knew that. But he’d shattered the pieces.

She looks into his familiar hazel eyes, glassy but laser-focused on her, and over the long, bleak months between then and now she doesn’t think she has ever felt more alone.

“Scotty, I can’t… I can’t do this with you now. I’m barely-...”

She will not cry. Not now. She will not.

“I can’t… I can’t even you out this time, Scott. Do you understand what I’m saying? I can’t save us this time. I wish I could, and... I want to try to... be next to you, if you want me to be, but I can’t…. I can’t save you _and_ me, Scotty. I just don’t have it in me.”

She presses her hand to her thumping heart. She feels certain it will beat right out of her chest unless she holds it in. She breathes in, unsteady, lets it go, and tries again. She’s not even sure he’s listening.

“Let’s just… let me get you home. I need you to help me, okay? I need you to get up, and come with me, so I can get you home. Will you do that for me?”

She’s losing him now, she can see it, even as his brain fights the alcohol, his eyebrows pinched together in intense concentration.

“I can gettup,” he mutters, and rolls over onto all fours, knocking her backwards and walking his hands back up the wall until he is standing. She gets to her feet beside him.

“Okay. Good, now let’s get your coat and head ou-”

He wheels around to look at her, their noses inches apart. And it would feel like them, like just another intense moment, but he’s disappearing before her eyes.

He’s still in there somewhere, she knows that for certain now, but she can’t see him anymore.

Still, she tries.

“Please, Scott. Please let me take you home.”

For a moment she thinks she’s got him; a fluttering of something across his face. But then he breaks eye contact, muttering to himself and shaking his head in small, twitchy movements, and it’s gone.

He turns away as if she’s not even there and lurches back to the pool table into a clutch of friends racking up for another round. One of his old Ilderton buddies sees her, walks over and throws an arm around her shoulders, shouting, “Tessa! Come play pool!” She throws him off a little too viciously, but grabs his arm, digging into her bag with her other hand and fighting the pricking in the corners of her eyes. She will _not_ cry here. She won’t.

She grabs a $50, presses it into his hand and hisses, “You get him home, you hear me? You get in a taxi with him and you make sure he gets home.”

He looks at her with widening eyes.

“You hear me?” she repeats herself, louder above the noise.

He nods. “Yeah-”

“You will?”

“Yeah, Tess, I promise.” He nods again, his face full of worry and… and pity, goddamn it. She turns to leave.

“Listen, Tess…” He catches her arm this time and she spins around.

“It’s… good to see you. It’s been a while. I…How are you doing? With everything?”

She flicks at her eyes with her free hand and tries desperately to blink back the tears that are threatening to spill over. She doesn’t trust herself to speak. She tries a press conference smile. Fails. Smiles ruefully instead, shakes her head and shrugs.

“Yeah…” he says, soft and sad, lifting the hand on her arm up to her shoulder. A solid, friendly grip that for just a moment, she’s quite sure, is the only thing that stops her disintegrating on the spot. “Yeah he’s not doing so great either.”

She nods. She can’t speak.

“You look after yourself, Tess. Don’t worry about him, I’ll make sure he gets home okay, you just… You take care of yourself. And come see us some time. We all miss you.”

He watches her go as she nods, grabs her coat where it hangs off the back of a nearby chair, and stumbles towards the door.

She barely pulls it open, barely makes it back to her car, barely gets inside and shuts the door.

She doesn’t see the soft white specks as the first snow starts to fall, settling steadily on the quiet darkness of the parking lot.

She doesn’t hear the bursts of music, punctuating the night each time someone opens the bar door and staggers out.

She doesn’t feel the cold as it seeps into the car, as she grips the steering wheel with white knuckles, desperate to anchor herself.

She weeps, at long last, deep wracking sobs in the darkness; a torrent banked up through months of denial and defiance, since he ran away from her and she chose not to go after him.

She weeps, messy and broken. For herself. For what they had. For what they were.

And she weeps for him, now. For him, as he was. For him, lost and drifting, and beyond her reach.

She weeps until her tears run to dust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bless you for reading this far, if you did. I'm very sorry.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a sliver of ice in her heart.
> 
> Or: a series of conversations from Sochi to Montreal to Scotland to China, on the long road back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is long. Structurally it's different to the other parts, cos what the hell, why NOT introduce a recurring motif in the third of four parts? Also? This is melodramatic as hell. But I figure you must be ok with melodrama if you're reading this fic at all, so.... you're welcome?
> 
> Fourth part is more or less finished, I just want it to be slightly less shit before I release it into the wild.
> 
> No but seriously, bless you, The-five-and-a-half-people-who-don't-hate-this. I adore you all, and this one's for you.

There is a sliver of ice in her heart.

She dreamed of it one night, and the image stuck with her: a splinter, a little shard, that stabbed its way inside of her about a week after her first surgery.

The silence had been too big a betrayal for tears, and a cold, indignant fury had seeded in her heart instead. It froze outwards in spiny fractals with every day that passed, until she was brittle and solid with it.

Things got better and her anger retreated with the thaw, but the little splinter stayed behind.

And there it remains, lodged in the chamber wall of her heart.

When things are good between them, it’s a warning. It twinges and reminds her that the good times never last. It stabs painfully when things are bad, to make sure she notices as each of its worst predictions come true. It twists sharply when things are at their worst, burrowing deeper and deeper into her torn flesh. It twists and it hurts and it makes her vicious. It makes her hurt him back.

It twisted that night in Sochi, and she made him think she didn’t want him.

 

* * *

 

**_Russia - February, 2014_ **

She was so tired, when it happened. Just so sick and tired of Marina, and judges, and her legs, and his girlfriends, and the way he touched her, and their silver medals, and everyone’s pity.

And more than anything she was sick of the question, so tired of everyone’s loaded expectation, when her own expectations had only ever proven hopeless.

People asked about it as if she owed them.

He was her best friend and business partner, her off-and-on-again unrequited love, the boy whose utter inability to decide how he felt about her had vacillated between being the most enormous relief and the most crushing disappointment of her life. He was all of that, and yet people asked about them as if it was somehow completely uncomplicated, and not at all terrifying, and in any way anyone else’s business.

They asked about it as if she was somehow supposed to have the mental and emotional bandwidth to sort through all of that, while she stood barely balanced on the precipice of What Comes Next; on the edge of an enormous post-career void that had opened at her feet and into which she could already feel herself falling.

It was too much. It was literally too much for her to grapple with all at once.

He’d joked all the way back to the village after another ridiculous interview that ranged from their disappointing silvers to their thoughts on when, exactly, they were going to succumb to the inevitable and just date already.

“Would it really be so bad? C’mon T, I’m not _that_ terrible,” he’d said, as he followed her into her room and shut the door behind him.

She’d been complaining too hard to really listen, and in any case he wasn’t serious. She knew he wasn’t serious. He was never serious when he said these things.

“And, y’know. We _do_ have… something. Other people can see it, too. … I get that.”

He wasn’t serious. He was definitely not serious. He was not seriously choosing that moment, there on the edge of the void, to grab her hand and jump.

But then she turned around and saw his face, and she saw it. In his beautiful hazel eyes that looked at her so softly, in those comical eyebrows of his that she enjoyed so much, peaked in the middle in hopeful expectation… she saw it.

She’d never related to that phrase, before: _frozen like a deer in headlights_. She didn’t freeze in the face of fear, she attacked it. It’s what had made her - made them - the best at what they did.

But he was serious.

And she froze.

The world turned white and all sound fell away. The ground electrified, rooting her to the spot. She wasn’t ready. She was a mess. She needed him to wait for her while she figured everything out. She thought he knew that. She couldn’t.

The shard in her heart twisted, hard.

_He’s surprising you with this now? Now? Is he fucking serious?_

Much, much later she would admit to herself that she had seen it coming, that she’d felt him working up to something. She felt it when he showed up at their last training session in Canton, portentously announcing that he’d broken up with his girlfriend. She felt it from the moment they landed in Sochi, in the way he touched her, in the way his lips had lingered just that little bit too close and too long. And that voice she’d boxed up and shut away years ago had started yelling at her again, louder than ever: _this is something, this is happening, this_ is _something and it_ is _happening, now_.

But her world was about to lurch off its axis and she wasn’t ready. Not even a little bit.

She had only meant to head him off, to begin with; to just put a pin in all of it until later. She was deflecting and half-joking, really, when she threw her hands in the air in exasperation and said:

“Don't you ever get tired of it?!”  
  
“Tired of what?” he’d said, warily, as if he sensed danger but couldn’t quite place the threat.

“Of the whole destiny thing! ‘Oh, they _belong_ together, they were _born_ for each other.’ Like, bad luck Tessa and Scott! No free will for you! You got put on a magical fairytale romance journey as little kids, and now you gotta see it through or you’ll be letting your entire country down!”

“I don’t know if that’s true, Tess,” he said, and it wouldn’t occur to her until much, much later just how quietly he said it.

“Of course it is! The undertone, every time, is, ‘date, you assholes, you owe us’ and, honestly, just back off, everybody! Fuck!”

She pretended she didn’t notice how he winced.

“I don’t think it’s about owing anyone, Tess. People’d just be happy for us if it happened, that’s all,” he said. It wouldn’t occur to her until much, much later just how nervously he said it. “It’s kinda nice.”

“Nice? A group of perfectly normal-looking Canadians - Canadians! Wearing maple leaves and everything! - literally yelled at me in the street yesterday to ‘just give the people what they want and marry that boy’. Everybody has lost their minds, Scott.”

Provoked by the memory, the icy shard stabbed violently at her.

And just like that, the dam burst.

“I’m just so tired of it! We just lost the Olympics for no good reason and I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to do now and they’re all telling me that this is it? I get to be your girlfriend? That’s all? What if I want to do more with my life than just be half of something?”

It all came spilling out, all the things she never, ever meant to tell him at all. She couldn’t stop herself. The words tripped over each other in their rush to get out into the open.

“It’s like I’m some doll they can dress up and make up shit about, and it’s not _me_. It’s not _real_. It’s not _anything_. I don’t even know what _me_ is! I literally don’t even know who I am outside of us! I don’t even feel like a whole person… I feel like…ugh! I feel like I’m suffocating!”

She broke off, doubled over and palms over her face and then flat against her diaphragm, gulping in ragged breaths, willing herself to calm down.

She felt like she’d just left and re-entered her body. Honestly, she had almost forgotten he was there.

“Well. I guess that’s my answer,” he’d said, so quietly she almost missed it.

She looked up at him then, and in all their life together she had never seen him look back at her like that; like a wounded puppy whose loving owner had suddenly turned violent.

Everything she’d said played back in her mind double-speed, and she heard it as he must have heard it. Horrified, she’d opened her mouth to explain, a cascade of half-formed words and terrified speechlessness all competing for space on her tongue, paralysing her.

“I didn't. ... Scott, I didn't-”

“Yes you did,” he said to his feet.

His voice was flat. Dried out. She wouldn't have recognised the sound if she hadn't seen him form the words.

“No, I didn't mean it like-”

“Yes you did, Tess.” He looked up at her, and seemed suddenly old; all grown up, like the real world had caught up with him at last. “You know you did.”

She opened her mouth to... She didn't even know what. Protest? Explain? Deny it? But before she could form the words, that traitorous voice in the back of her head piped up again. _You know he's right. You know you meant it. You know you did._

“Scott, I-”

“Do you really hate it that much? The idea of…”

He trailed off. She couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand any of it, and her words still weren’t working properly.

“It’s not that I hate it, I-”

“I need you, Tess,” he cut her off. She felt sick. She just needed him to stop talking before things got worse.

“Scott. Don’t. I-”

“I need you. Is that so-”

“That’s the problem, Scott!” It burst out of her with a bitter laugh. She sounded hysterical, and she hated herself for it. “ _I_ need to know who I am outside of this - outside of us. I need to know that I’m _someone_ , just me, a complete person all on my own, and I need to know that I _don’t_ need you-”

She gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth, completely spent. The dam had burst, the water had slowed back to a trickle after the flood, and she stood there in the carnage she’d wrought, appalled and utterly speechless.

He cleared his throat in the silence.

“No, I never really got tired of the whole destiny thing, Tessa, to answer your question. I guess I was just never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

And that wasn’t at all fair, and it wasn’t at all true. _He was the one who paraded girlfriends in front of you, for years, even though he knew - he must have known - how you felt_ , the splinter reminded her. _He was the one who held you and told you everything was going to be okay, and then disappeared_. It wasn’t at all fair and it wasn’t at all true. But she had no words left.

The shard of ice throbbed painfully in her heart. She was so very tired.

He hesitated a moment longer and then moved at last, stumbling backwards, still looking at her, as if he was waiting for her to say something.

She didn’t.

He left, and she didn’t go after him.

She went looking for him at breakfast the next morning, and there was someone else.

 

* * *

 

**_Canada - November, 2014_ **

They don’t discuss that night at the bar, when they sat slumped on the floor and he asked her why she didn’t want him.

She doesn’t even know if he remembers, and she doesn’t ask him.

The show must go on, and for that they need show programs, and for that, Marie-France organises Gadbois ice time and choreography sessions with a friend of hers.

She wasn’t totally sure about the whole hip hop idea in the beginning. But then Marie-France pointed out that it would be entirely different from the romantic, lyrical choreo that was in fashion everywhere else, and it occurred to her that hip hop was probably a pretty great idea after all.

They arrive in Montreal and meet Sam, who takes an immediate shine to both of them. Even Scott can’t remain sullen in the face of the other man’s relentless cheeriness, and the thrill of a new language of movement.

They meet to discuss program music. Sam excitedly pulls out his laptop, and hits play.

Marie-France’s face goes white. Scott visibly blanches.

She doesn’t know the track. But as she listens to the lyrics, as she watches Sam move through a subconscious, miniturised version of his choreography, it becomes very clear how it’s going to look.

Scott is the first to speak.

“Ah… ‘Good Kisser’?”

“Yeah! It’s so fresh, it’s so funky, the style is very now! I’m thinking like this,...” and then Sam’s up and in the centre of the studio, demonstrating choreo with the air of an excited puppy, completely oblivious to the way the atmosphere in the studio has sharpened and the air has become dense.

Suddenly Marie-France is at her side.

“Tessa, cherie, you don’t have to. We can find something else,” she says, low in her ear.

He’s standing tense and still on Marie’s other side, eyes on Sam but attention fixed on her, gauging her reaction.

The splinter twists. _What exactly do you think you’re doing?_

“It’s fine, Marie. It’s great!” she beams encouragingly at Sam, who has turned to them at last. “Everything is fine,” she adds in an undertone. Because it has to be. What better way to prove it, than to lean hard into the lie?

She hears his sharp inhale and sees him nod, then he’s walking forward with a look of grim determination.

“Yeah. It’s great, Sam. Show me that first part again?”

She can feel Marie looking at her, can feel the concern radiating off her in waves.

She takes a deep breath, plasters on a press conference smile and turns brightly to the woman who is her friend and mentor and not at all fooled by any of it.

“It’s great! Show me too, Sam?”

And he does.

And the thing is… it’s almost wonderful.

This has always been them. Practice was always the time they were able to put aside whatever tension there was between them, and just concentrate on the work. It’s the one place she’s always been able to bully the icy splinter into silence. It twists and she ignores it until it leaves her alone.

Sam’s energy and enthusiasm and excitement is infectious. Her professional instincts kick in, and, forced to move differently and to work with someone they don’t know, she doesn’t have time to remember the distance. All her concentration is tied up in hitting every sharp pop of an arm, every low slide of a leg.

She can almost feel it, the bubble, trying to reform around them like the repairing hole in the ozone; trying to bind them back together and close them off from everyone else, in a place where he’s allowed to touch her and she’s allowed to let him and no one can say anything because it’s acting and it’s nothing, anyway.

She’s sure he feels it, too.

He’s there. He touches her with intent. He lifts her like there’s no way he would let her fall. He looks her in the eye, like he’s not afraid of what he’ll find there.

They’re them. In Montreal, in the studio, in a cobbled together bubble on Marie and Patch’s ice… they’re them. Sam films videos of them practising and sends them to her. She watches them before she goes to sleep, phone held above her face, glowing in the darkness; her smile glowing too.

She’s still floating in it, when they board the plane for London. He pulls out his own phone and films her, dancing down the aisle of the plane, performing for him. Only for him. She can’t help it. They sit down next to each other and her phone pings when he sends her the clip. She watches it again and smiles. She uploads it to instagram. _Thanks to Sam_ , she captions it, and sends out a silent prayer in gratitude to Marie-France and her unexpected Quebecois dancer-slash-guardian angel. She feels lighter than she has in months.

He smiles at her as the plane starts taxiing, and puts his headphones in as she opens her book.

His someone is there to greet him at the airport.

The half-formed bubble bursts.

 

* * *

 

**_Scotland - June, 2015_ **

She likes his someone.

His someone is funny and kind and patient, and could be so good for him, if only he’d let her…

It is inconvenient.

She tries her best. She tries so very hard. She ignores the brittle cold threatening to creep outwards from her heart. She plunges into the freezing northern sea with his someone instead. She laughs and takes pictures.

She tries.

She can’t get the chill out of her bones, not for hours. And that night, despite the summer season, she is grateful for the open fire in the drawing room. It’s a fittingly old-world throwback, with deers heads on the walls, and overstuffed sofas and armchairs clustered around an open fireplace. She seems to be the only person in the hotel who ever wants to use it.

She’s curled into the cushions, her mug of tea on the coffee table that separates her favourite sofa from its twin, her book forgotten on her lap as she stares into the fire.

That’s how they find her, him and his someone, who lights up when she sees her sitting alone. She waves hello, tugs his hand, and pulls him across the room. They settle into the sofa opposite hers, and launch into some smalltalk about the day. Then all three open their books, and a heavy quiet settles over the room.

She stares at her page, reading the same line over and over. She is hyper aware of him. He hasn’t turned a single page, either.

After a while, his yawning someone gets up, stretches, and announces she’s calling it a night. She stops him with a smile when he makes to follow. “No, stay. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so engrossed in a book - enjoy it,” she says, kissing him softly before she goes.

The crackle of the fire is deafening in the silence.

“She doesn’t feel threatened by you,” he says, so softly she almost misses it.

And then, softer still:

“I should like that about her.”

The weight in the air grows heavier still. She keeps her eyes fixed on her book, and says nothing.

“What does it say about you and me, do you think - about how we are now - that she’s not threatened by you?”

“Scott.” She directs the warning at her book. She can feel him looking at her.

“What does it say about me, that I’m… sad, that she doesn’t feel threatened by you?”

“Scott, stop it.”

“No, come on, Tess. Let’s just… Cards on the table.” She can see him leaning forward in her peripheral vision. She stares stubbornly at her page. “Don’t tell me I’m just imagining things. I’m not.”

And he’s right. He’s not.

He’s been drinking less and training more, and both of those things mean she’s been seeing more of him. Both of those things, and Jeff’s ‘How Will I Know’ choreo, and Sam’s ‘Good Kisser’ choreo, and suddenly she feels like the level surface she’d fought so hard for has tilted, like the Cirque du Soleil shows that Sam told them about, and she’s scrabbling for purchase and sliding… Sliding somewhere she doesn’t want to admit to right now in a sitting room in Scotland with his someone upstairs in his bed.

She keeps looking at her page, and says nothing.

“Just tell me,” he continues, low and urgent. “For once in your life, Tess, please, just tell me how you feel.”

She glances up at that, the splinter stabbing hard. That’s not fair. That was never fair.

“Once in my life? You always knew, Scott. I always told you. I told you that night how I felt and you ran as far and as fast as you c-”

“Not about me, you didn’t, Tess.”

She pulls up short, and his eyes meet hers, dark hazel flashing gold in the firelight.

“You never told me how you felt about me. About…” he breaks off, gesturing vaguely. “About… other people, about pressure, sure. But not about me. You’ve never told me, you know that? Not out loud. Not once. Just… Please?”

She wrenches her eyes from his. That can’t be true. She must have… But as she thinks about it, she realises… She never has. She thought he knew. He knows. Of course he knows. He must have known. She can’t look at him.

“Tess, please.”

“Why?”

“I could make some guesses...” He leans further forward, ignoring the question, like his body is straining towards her. “You feel angry, right? Frustrated.” She hears him sigh. “Worried, probably.”

“Scott, don’t-”

“But I think there might be something else, and if you don’t tell me then I can’t-...” He sighs again. He sounds so tired. “Please don’t make me guess, T.”

She wants to say it. God she wants to.

“I can’t do this, Scott,” she says, closing her book, and standing up to leave. But as she moves past him he grabs for her hand and catches it in his, softly but solid.

Her body reacts involuntarily to his touch. Her heart pounds, and the shard of ice throbs painfully with every beat.

She doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t turn around; she just stands there, studying the pattern of the antique carpet, her arm pulled gently behind her and her hand held firmly in his. He rubs his thumb over her knuckles.

“Please don’t. Don’t make me into that girl, Scott. I don’t want to be that girl.”

She catches his reflection in the mirror above the fireplace, his face hidden from view as he stares at his feet.

He doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t look up at her; he just sits there, holding her hand, refusing to let her go.

“And you don’t want to be that guy. I know you don’t want to be that guy. You’re not that guy.”

They stand there in silence; for ten seconds or ten hours, she couldn’t say.

And she realises that she has the strength for this; for this one, small thing. From this one tiny, enormous thing… she can still save them.

She lets go of his hand.

“We’re not a sure thing Scotty,” she says, her voice muffled by her shoulder as she half-turns back to him. “You can’t blow up your life for… We’re not a sure thing.” She still can’t bring herself to turn around. “And I think we blew it. I wish we didn’t, but… I think we did.”

“I don’t think so,” he tells the carpet at his feet. “I don’t think we could skate like we’re skating if we blew it-”

“And what’s that got to do with it?” she asks, not with heat, but with resignation. Because steps, skating, performing... none of that was ever the problem.

Because… so, she loves him, so what?

And she does. She can admit that out loud now - at least to herself. _Hi, my name is Tessa Virtue and I’m in love with Scott Moir_. Fine. She loves him. And maybe he loves her too. But, so what? In the grand sweep of what they’ve done to each other, what’s love got to do with it, really?

“I just…” His voice is so quiet in the silence. “I’m just asking, Tess.”

She takes a deep breath, and turns to face him at last.

“I can’t, Scott. I w-.” The icy splinter twists sharply. _You’ve never been able to have this. Why on earth would you think you can have it now?_ And she knows she can’t say it. She couldn’t forgive herself. They’d only hurt each other again, and she likes his someone. She thinks he could even be happy, if he’d just let himself be happy.

She has strength enough to do this one thing. She will save him from this. From them. And eventually she will figure out how to save herself, too.

So she tries.

“I’m sorry, Scott.”

He finally looks up at her, then. And he looks at her - really looks at her - like he hasn’t done for a very long time.

Then he nods, a small gesture, as if he knew it was coming but had hope enough to try just one more time.

“Okay, Tess.” He closes the book still open on his lap. “Okay.”

He stands up, walks the long way around to the doorway. He stops short when he reaches it, spinning back around as if he’s reached the end of a tether. She can feel the other end tugging somewhere near her heart. She ignores it.

“I’m really sorry, Tess. For all of it. I really am sorry.”

The shard twinges in vindication as he turns to leave. _Yeah, well_ , she thinks. _I’m still standing. We’re still standing._

“Scott,” she calls after him and he freezes, half-turned away from her. “Me too. I’m really sorry, too. I’m… For everything.”

He holds her gaze a moment longer, then nods again and mumbles something, so softly she almost misses it.

“Love ya, Tess.”

She stands there in the darkness and listens as the echo of his footsteps fades away.

She stands there and breathes, until the throbbing of her heart evens out and she can gather strength enough to move.

And the next day, in a bar across town, a couple of musicians will play a song, and a couple of skaters - dumbfounded by it, overcome by it, and sliding towards the edge of it in spite of themselves - will lock eyes across the room.

And someone who never deserved it will wonder… just wonder, if maybe there’s something to worry about after all.

 

* * *

 

**_China - August, 2015_ **

They’ve been inching towards it for months. She could feel her own inclination shifting, deep in her gut. She could feel him working up to it, too.

And so it isn’t exactly a surprise to her, in the car on their way to hike the Great Wall, when he looks sidelong at her a few times and then finally asks, kind of sheepishly, “So… hypothetically, say you were going to consider competing again - with me, I mean - who would you want to coach us?”

She is unsurprised enough that she has to suppress a smile. He’s definitely starting with the low-hanging fruit.

“Well, obviously we’d go back to Canton-”

He whips his head around, bug-eyed, and the car lurches violently, setting off a chain reaction of angry honking from the surrounding motorists.

“Scott! I’m kidding! Keep your eyes on the road before you kill us!”

“Keep my eyes on the road? How about not giving the driver a heart attack, eh? Jesus…”

They sit in silence for a moment, staring straight ahead. But in the end she can’t contain it.

“Are you… Are you laughing right now, Tessa?”

She can’t reply, sitting hunched over in the passenger seat, her giggles quickly escalating to actual cackling.

And then he starts too, laughing helplessly and batting at her leg as the honking continues.

“No stop, Tess, seriously. I need to concentrate or I’m going to miss the exit.”

“Well, you asked!”

“I was being serious!”

“Scott,” she scoffs. “Obviously it would be Marie-France and Patrice. That’s not even a question.”

“If they’d have us…”

“Scott! Come on.”

“Well? We don’t know!”

“We know.”

“We don’t know. The last time I chatted with Patch about it-”

“You’ve ‘chatted with Patch about it’?”

“-he said… well he indicated, that we would have to really show them, y’know. That we were serious. Before they’d take us on.” He glances sidelong at her again. “And yes, I’ve ‘chatted with Patch about it’.”

She shrugs and pulls her feet up onto the seat, hugging her arms around her shins. She leans forward, props her chin on her knees and looks at him.

“Well… I’d like to think that if we were going to do this at all - hypothetically, of course - then of course we’d be really serious about it. Right? Otherwise, why bother?”

“...Well, yeah.”

“And so? Marie and Patch. Obviously.”

“And the Olympics, right? The gold medal, if we’re going to do it at all. Hypothetically.”

She smirks. “I mean, I know it stings that we never got that Grand Prix, Scott, but honestly I can live without it if that’s as good as we’re hoping for here…”

“Just checking!” he shoots back, the corners of his mouth twitching. He holds up one hand in surrender and lapses into silence. “That one does cut a little though, eh?”

She throws an exaggerated pout at him before she even thinks about what she’s doing.

“I know, baby.”

She says it teasingly, like she’s calling him a child, like she did years and years ago, before things got weird and when the stakes weren’t so high and the language wasn’t so loaded.

She curses herself and holds her breath.

But then he snorts, and any charged moment is gone as soon as it came.

“Yeah… well. It does though,” he chuckles. “Oh, hey, this is the exit, right?”

They bat it back and forth as they drive along - hypothetically - and find, not all that surprisingly, but still a little surprisingly, that they’re on the same page.

They’d have to do it differently. Be more in control of their own destiny this time. They’d have to be better. Different choreography. Faster. Stronger. More skilled. No resting on laurels or past glory. She’d have to completely overhaul her technique, because she’s not skating in that kind of pain ever again. She’s heard of some people who could help with that.

“Well, if you have to relearn how to skate, then I have to relearn how to skate,” he says, looking straight ahead and nodding decisively.

“Well… that’s not strictly necessary, though, is it? Hypothetically, of course.”

“If you have to do it, I have to do it. We’re a team.”

She didn’t expect that. She didn’t expect that at all. She’s touched. The splinter twinges and she ignores it, but feels a sudden defensive need to undercut the seriousness of his declaration.

“But Scott… I hate to be the one to tell you this, but, you’re actually quite good already. No once-in-a-generation talent or anything, but surely Disney on Ice would have you.”

He laughs then - really laughs - and she finds herself smiling. She’d forgotten, somehow - and how could she possibly have forgotten? - how much she loves to make him laugh.

“Well, be that as it may,” he says, catching his breath, “that’s not how this works.”

He looks over at her then, for just as long as the traffic allows. And suddenly she can see them all, whizzing past in her mind: roadtrips to Canton, and roadtrips back home, and years of making each other laugh, and gold medals, and winning, and everything that went right before it all started going wrong.

“How it works,” he continues, smiling at her and looking back at the road, “is that it’s you and me. Together. The way it was always supposed to be. Hypothetically, of course. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right. Right?”

“Right,” she smiles back at him, a little nervously and a little overcome. Like all of a sudden she’s not sure if they’re still talking about skating technique. Like all of a sudden she’s sitting next to the grown up version of the boy who held her and told her everything was going to be okay. Like maybe he means it this time, and all of a sudden she can see it. That maybe this is something. Maybe it really is something, and maybe it really is happening now. After all this time. “Right. Hypothetically.”

By the time they reach the Great Wall, they’ve dropped the hypotheticals.

By the time they reach their turnaround point, there’s really only one question left to answer.

They stand, not quite side by side, each looking out over the view from their own gap in the ramparts.

He keeps his eyes fixed on the horizon as he speaks.

“So… What do you think?”

And there it is at last. The detonation charge that either of them could set off at any moment. That one of them probably should, before they get in too deep. She looks straight ahead, and tiptoes around it like a landmine.

“Well… I think all of that sounds really great.”

“Me too.”

“Great. But. … Then there’s the other thing.”

She holds her breath. He doesn’t say anything. She can’t blame him, not really, not after everything that’s gone before. The icy splinter shifts in her heart. She forces herself to ignore it.

“She’s a great girl, Scott. I mean that, she really is.”

“Yeah.”

“And I… think you could really be happy. If you let yourself, y’know?”

She can hear his deep breath in the silence, heaved out and over the wall into the valley below.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“And…” She forces herself to keep going, even as her heart tries to smash its way out through her ribs.

“And… we’re not a sure thing, Scott. Nobody is a sure thing.” She can barely hear herself speak. All she can feel is his presence, silent and coiled tight as a spring a few feet from her. She can barely force the words out. She can’t get enough air.

But she can feel it; it is everything on the table, now, or nothing.

“We hurt each other. I hurt you. And I broke us, and… And I’m sorry. You know I’m sorry, but I did that, Scott, and-”

In her peripheral vision, she sees him turn to face her at last.

“Tess.”

She keeps her gaze fixed resolutely on the middle distance, looking over the edge, over the long drop into the valley below.

“Tess,” he says again, and steps closer. He reaches for her hand and she lets him take it. She draws another shaky breath. She can’t bring herself to look at him.

“I know all that. And I hurt you too. And god I hope you know I’m sorry, because I really am sorry, Tess. And you’re right. She is great. And maybe… I don’t know, maybe, if things were different... Maybe. But…”

He reaches over and takes her other hand in his. She looks down at the way they fit together, at the way they always have, and up at him at last.

And she sees it.

In his beautiful hazel eyes that look so softly at her, still. In those comical eyebrows of his that she loves so much, peaked in the middle in hopeful expectation, despite everything, after everything. Hopeful, still.

She sees it.

He smiles.

“But Tess, the thing is… Things aren’t different. And the fact remains that I lo-”

“No wait, don’t say it.”

It’s out of her mouth before she even thinks about it. And his face goes white, and he makes to pull his hands from hers, and she wants to curse herself into oblivion.

“No! Scott, no. I didn’t-. That is _not_ what I meant, just…” she holds tightly to him, refusing to let him pull away. “Hang on.”

She closes her eyes, breathes, and looks back up at him, no longer looking like he’s about to be sick or trying to pull away. She squeezes his hands reassuringly, and tries again.

“I just meant: not yet. Not when you’re... not free, to say it to me. Is that weird? I just… If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right. Right?”

His shoulders relax, and she could almost faint in relief.

“Right,” he answers, with a small nod and an even smaller smile. “So… Does that mean that if I… Then you’d... Y’know.”

“Scott Moir, are you asking me if we’re a sure thing?”

“Um…” He looks down at his feet, absently kicking a pebble and sending it skittering along the wall. “Kinda. I guess so, yeah.”

“I don't know?” She shrugs helplessly, smiling now. “We can't know, right? Not really. But... I think maybe we could be. I want us to be. I want…”

She pulls herself up short, teetering there on the precipice with him, after all this time.

She leaps.

“I want you.”

He smiles at her then - really smiles - his face breaking open into that wide grin she loves so much. And then he’s stepping forward, right into her space, pressing his forehead to hers and holding their joined hands to his chest. His heart feels like it’s about to break his ribs, too.

“Do it right, eh?”

“Yeah.” Her voice is shaking, but she’s never felt so solid. She can barely breathe, but she feels lighter than she has in years.

They stand there like that on the ancient wall, with the valley stretching out behind them and a long adventure stretching out in front, until eventually she forces herself to take one last deep breath. She pulls back from him, drops her arms by her sides, and smiles.

“Come on, we should head back.”

He smiles at her, he won’t stop smiling at her, and takes her hand again.

The icy splinter twitches in her heart. She ignores it.

They turn for home, squinting into the golden glare of the afternoon sun as it sinks slowly towards the horizon.

And they walk back along the wall, hand in hand, together.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would they have been walking in a westerly direction along the wall in order to get home? I have no idea. I just wanted them to end this chapter walking off into the sunset hand in hand... sue me.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Fuck destiny', she thinks, viciously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for embracing this desperately sad fic and sticking with me while I found a way to make it better. I sincerely hope this delivers on that promise for you.
> 
> Also, in this chapter... some Scott POV! Because who needs structural consistency?! (smdh at myself.) However. This is the first multi-chapter fic I've ever managed to finish. So it might be 18,000-odd words of inconsistently-structured melodrama, but I'm proud of it. And I'm grateful to you for choosing to read it, when you've got an infinite sea of fic to choose from. Thank you. <3

It starts with a flickering.

The change in his breathing is enough to wake her, the speeding up and the staccato inhale.

She can just make out his face in the not-quite-light, where the city glow bleeds into the bedroom. His eyelids quiver and contract and he shudders, twice, just barely, and settles again.

She holds her breath.

Silence. Stillness.

She curls into his side and goes back to sleep.

When his alarm wakes them a few hours later, she doesn’t remember it at all.

***

She’s becoming accustomed to watching him sleep.

Some nights she wakes on her own, restless, and wraps her arms around the solid warmth of his chest. She listens to his breathing until it pulls her anxious mind back from the cliff’s edge, back to the shelter of their bed and the circle of his arms, until she can sleep again.

Some nights his nightmares wake her, with his ragged breath and the flickering of his heartbeat under her palm.

It’s happened a few times and it’s only been a couple of weeks. It’s been no time at all, really, since they started this. And while it feels stupid to say it’s new - that anything between them could be called ‘new’, after everything and all this time - ‘new’ is what it is.

Him, in her bed, sleeping naked beside her. It’s new.

So when he twitches in his sleep as she watches him, frowning and twisting towards and away from her, she’s not entirely sure if the dreams are new, too.

She hasn’t asked him about them. Not yet.

She has a feeling, and she’s not sure that she’s ready for the answer. She’s not sure _they’re_ ready. Because this thing between them is precious, but it still feels a little precarious, too; littered with half-unpacked conversations like the moving boxes still strew across their new Montreal apartments.

They’re still figuring it out, and it is so precious, and she has a feeling. So she doesn’t ask.

Instead, she concentrates on the constants, the truths tested and known, that have taken form in her mind as a grouping of immovable rocky skelligs. She’d learned about them in a celtic history documentary, of all things, on the plane home from Scotland last summer. Solid, jagged things, pushing out of the ocean like beacons, no matter how turbulent the waters that roiled around them, no matter how wild the storms that broke over them.

 _That’s me_ , she’d thought at the time, as he and his someone sat next to each other four rows back. _Still standing_.

Now, in her mind, it’s them, and all the things she knows to be true.

She loves him. He loves her. They are better together. They want this. They have to try.

He shudders again, his head jerking away from her.

She reaches for him just as he startles violently. She freezes, her hand hovering halfway between them. Then, tentatively tracing the furrowed lines of his brow with her fingertips, feather-light, she murmurs softly:

“It’s okay, baby. You’re okay. I’m here with you.”

He sighs and turns back towards her in his sleep, his eyes still flickering behind his eyelids but the movement slowing. The more she whispers to him, the more he settles, until it feels safe to anchor her hand back over his heart, tuck herself against his side, and let him breathe her back to sleep too.

She wakes when the light will let her sleep no longer, a non-training day luxury. She opens her eyes to see him watching her closely. Lying on his side, curled towards her, his fingers trail a gentle pattern up and down her arm.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey yourself,” she answers, debating whether to ask about a nightmare he might have forgotten all about anyway. She decides on an indirect approach. “You sleep ok?”

A shadow crosses his face before he brightens, mechanically.

“Yeah. Yeah, I slept fine. Thanks. You?”

“Yeah. Fine. Thank you.”

Then he rolls away from her and out of bed. He asks if she wants coffee, but leaves the bedroom without waiting for an answer.

She tries to ignore the bitter stab in her heart, the little shard of ice that’s buried there still, unmelting, no matter how bright her flashes of happiness, or how hard he loves her with his body or his heart, or how often or loudly she tells herself she forgives and is forgiven.

It twitches again. _You’ve never been able to have this before. What makes you think this time will be any different?_

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath and pictures the constants rising out of the ocean in the morning light.

She loves him. He loves her. They want this. They have to try.

And huffing in frustration - at herself, at him, at them, at all of it - she gets up and follows him to the kitchen.

***

The first couple of times, he isn’t even sure that he dreamed at all.

He wakes up feeling bereft, like he’s forgotten that he lost something important but can’t quite place what, or why it matters so much anyway.

Then the dreams get more vivid, and he longs for the mornings when he could remember nothing.

Eventually, he notices that she’s noticed too.

The shrapnel of the last dream is still ricocheting around his head when he wakes, anchored though he is in her arms. He lies there and gazes at her, breathing her in and reminding himself that those days are over now and he will never, ever let them go back.

She wakes and hesitantly asks if he slept okay, which is how he knows that she knows that he did not.

But he can’t bear to say it out loud. He can’t bring himself to pull something so stupid and intangible into the real world, to throw it out onto the bed between them and turn it into something they have to talk about. Because they are never going back there, he won’t let them, but it’s still so new, this thing of theirs. He isn’t sure how much pressure it can sustain.

In his mind, he follows the fork of the conversation to its logical conclusion, and watches it all unravel. _It was nothing, just a bad dream_ would prompt _What did you dream about?_ And if he is honest he’ll end up telling her _I dreamed that you left; that I told you I needed you, and you told me you didn’t want me. Again_.

If he says that out loud, he just knows it, she’ll look down at their joined hands and then back up at him, disappointed and hurt and sliding towards anger, and she’ll ask _Just how many times do you need me to apologise for that, exactly?_ And it won’t matter that he doesn’t need her to apologise anymore, that he doesn’t want her to, because by then the course will be set. _I just wanted time and I just…_ You _left_ me _, if you recall_ , she’ll say. And she’ll be right.

And that’s when they’ll shatter, under the weight of everything that’s gone before.

He is so afraid that they will never reach the end of the shadow cast by that night in Sochi, but he’ll be damned if he’ll destroy this thing by pushing her too hard too soon.

And the truth is, he _does_ believe her when she says she loves him. He feels certain they’re going to have to get to the rest of it eventually, but not yet. He’s not ready. He can’t bring himself to risk it.

So he tells her he slept fine, and she tells him the same. And he rolls out of bed and asks if she wants coffee.

He starts towards the kitchen before she answers, so she can’t read the conversation not taken on his face.

***

It keeps happening.

Not every night, but often enough that she develops a routine.

She tucks into him and traces the lines of his face and murmurs love and reassurance until it’s over. Sometimes he settles quickly, like nothing happened. Sometimes he reaches for her in his sleep, and clings to her until the sun comes up.

She grows a little desperate on those nights, pinned to his side and the darkness closing in on her.

She tries again to talk to him about it. A couple of times, she tries. She tells him he seemed a bit restless, probing gently, and trying to smile when he laughs it off even as the icy shard in her heart throbs painfully.

 _Maybe we don’t get to have this forever_ , she thinks, in answer to the mocking, twisting ache of it. _But I am not letting go until I absolutely have to._

She hugs him tighter while she can, and hopes it will be enough.

***

Eventually, inevitably, the night comes when he wakes himself up with a start and a shout that would have woken her too if his thrashing around hadn’t already.

She props herself up on one elbow and peers down at him in the darkness, her worried fingers tracing his brows and his jaw, and combing through his hair.

“Scott.”

His breathing is ragged and he looks right through her, as if he can’t really see her at all.

“Baby, please. Please tell me what’s going on.”

She presses soft kisses to his cheek, to his temple, to his shoulder, and pulls herself tight against him. She keeps stroking his face and his hair the way she knows he likes, anything she can think of to try to ground him, to bring him back to her. He feels so far away.

Then the icy splinter twists, and she knows it’s time. She voices the fear she’s held all along.

“It’s me, isn’t it.”

His eyes snap to hers, and that just confirms it.

“It’s something about me, or us, or…” She takes a shaky breath. “Please just tell me. I promise, it’s okay. It’s just a dream, Scott. It’s not real.”

He stares back at her as if he’s trying to read her mind. He looks frightened, and his fear scares her. She doesn’t know what else to say, and he doesn’t say anything at all.

She almost lets it go, almost prepared to accept that they’re reaching their inevitable conclusion. This is what they do. They fail and they fall apart.

But then she feels the thud of his heart, real and vital, under her palm.

And _fuck destiny_ , she thinks, viciously. _Fuck fate, and fuck expectations. I choose you, Scott Moir. No one gets to tell me I can’t have you._

She breathes deep and steels herself. She looks into his eyes, black and afraid in the darkness. Her voice, when it comes, surprises her. She sounds frightened, too.

“Please, Scott. It’s worse not knowing.”

*

_Please, Scott. It’s worse not knowing._

Her voice is so small and so scared. And for all his anxiety about the path the conversation could take, this is infinitely worse. Tessa, actually sad and afraid, right now, right in front of him.

There’s no way around it.

“It’s just a stupid dream, T, it doesn’t mean anything,” he begins with a sigh.

“Just a stupid dream,” she echoes with a small nod. “So just tell me. Please?”

He takes a shuddering breath and sends out a prayer to anyone who’s listening.

“I dream that you don’t want me.”

Her fingernails curl into his chest, but she stays silent so he barrels on.

“I dream that you leave me, or sometimes that I never had you in the first place. Sometimes both. You know what dreams are like, it’s all mixed up. But I dream that you don’t want me. It’s…”

“It’s Sochi, basically,” she finishes for him, and he nods.

“I know it all sounds kind of… I don’t know… Needy.” He winces. “I’m sorry.”

He braces himself for the slide into disaster, and then she surprises him.

“Don’t apologise. I _do_ want you. So much, Scott.”

She looks at him like she knows there’s more, like she knows it couldn’t be that simple.

“I know. I do know that, I just. I can’t make them stop. The dreams. And I know they’re just stupid dreams and I don’t even want us to be talking about stupid dreams, but I just… it gets in my head, y’know? Like maybe I don’t get to have this, after all. That we don’t. Get to have this, I mean.”

He's babbling now, he knows he is, but he thinks that maybe if he can just keep talking, if he can delay the moment when she needs to say something in response, that maybe he can just outlast her.

“And I know it’s stupid, and I know I’m being needy, I just...”

She brings the hand on his chest up to cup his cheek, turns his face towards her and shifts so that she’s staring straight down into his eyes. Her hair falls in a curtain over her left shoulder.

She looks fierce, even in the darkness. His words trail off at the sight of her.

“Scott, look at me. I love you. You’re not being stupid. You’re not ‘needy’, I like that you need me. I love you. Breathe.”

As soon as she says it he realises his breathing is all over the place, and so he looks back at her like she asks and tries to match his breath with hers.

She breathes with him until the pattern evens out, before she speaks again.

“Tell me what you see.”

He sighs and looks away. “Tess-”

“Tell me.”

He sighs again. He knows what she’s doing, but he’s not really in the mood to be therapised right now, to be honest. He’d really rather just forget they ever embarked on this conversation at all.

“You...” he mutters at the ceiling.

She grasps his cheek more firmly, until he looks back at her. “Scott. Look at me. Tell me what you see.”

He sees her, green eyes flashing black in the darkness. He clears his throat.

“You. I see you.” And just saying it out loud helps, somehow. So he says it again.

“I see you. In our bed. With me.”

He even manages a small smile at that, but she is not smiling now. Her eyes are hard. Determined. She breaks eye contact and looks down at her hand, now tracing a finger up his arm, playing across the divot of his clavicle.

“Do you feel that? Does that feel real?”

He shivers.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

She reaches down and takes his hand, pulling it up to her chest. His throat goes dry.

“Tess… not that I don’t appreciate the gesture right now, but--”

“Shush, not _that._ ” She shakes her head and anchors his hand over her heart, and shimmies so she’s sitting up, so she can take her weight off her elbow and press her other hand back over his heart in return.

“You feel that?”

And he does. Of course he does. Like always. The thud of her heart behind her ribs, in time with his already, without even trying, just in sync on their own.

“Yeah, I feel it.” He sighs.

“There you go. So do I. That’s real, Scott, not any dream. We’re real. Here. Together. Where we’ve chosen to be.” She grasps his hand closer to her own chest and presses harder into his, emphasising each word as if she’d like to shake some sense into their hearts themselves, if she could.

He looks back up at her then, really looks, as the inky blue of the bedroom starts to slide towards pre-dawn grey. Her eyes betray none of the hurt or disappointment he’d expected to find, only worry and concern. Ferocity, too. A gold-medal, world-record, fuck-the-judges ferocity. The kind of look he’s used to seeing before a big skate. The kind that means she’s made up her mind about something and that’s that.

He could kick himself for this, for worrying her over this. Over nothing. Over his own stupid head.

But even as he thinks that, he realises that he actually really needs to hear her say it out loud. He doesn’t know how to ask. Doesn’t even really know exactly what he’s asking for.

Somehow, she says it anyway.

“I’m here, Scott. I’m right here. Wild horses…” She breaks off with a shake of her head, and swallows hard. “Wild horses couldn’t drag me… ” She sucks in a deep breath and closes her eyes, gathering herself. He can feel the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. And then she opens her eyes and she smiles at him, her expression softening at the edges, and she starts again.

“You’re not being stupid, and you’re not being needy. You’re just scared. And that’s ok, I’m scared too. It’s… scary,” she breathes out a soft laugh, and some of the tension in his body starts to ebb away. “But there are constants, right? There are things that we know are true. And we’ve just got to remember those until we work out the rest.”

He clears his throat.

“And what are those things?” he asks, and kind of hates himself for asking.

She cocks her head and smiles fondly at him, and a bit more of his tension leeches away.

“I love you. You love me. And we are exactly where we want to be. Both of us. Right here, now, together.”

She spreads the hand over his heart as she speaks, pressing gently, like someone returning from space might touch the earth for the first time, to reassure themselves that it’s really there.

Then her head straightens sharply.

“You do know that all of that is true, right? When you’re awake?” Her voice catches then, suddenly urgent. “Please tell me you know that. Please tell me I haven’t made you-”

She cuts herself off, and all of a sudden all trace of hard ferocity and soft fondness has completely disappeared. He can read her thought as clear as day.

“No, Tess. No.” He rushes to reassure her, sitting up and pulling her into a hug, holding her tight. “You haven’t, I promise. You haven’t made me doubt it, I swear, it’s just me and my stupid head...”

And he pulls her hand off his chest and brings it to his mouth, kissing her palm and cupping it between his own hand and his cheek, leaning into her touch. She looks so worried all of a sudden, her eyes wide in the half-light.

“Then… why?” Her voice is so soft. “And please stop calling yourself stupid, but… why do you think the dreams hurt you so much? Why didn’t you want to tell me? Do you… do you worry about it for real? About me leaving?”

“No, Tess,” he shakes his head for emphasis. And the moment he says it out loud, he knows it’s true.

“Then…”

“It’s just a stupid dream, Tess-”

“I know, but-”

“Look. I-” He stops. But suddenly he can see the path unfolding in front of them, all lit up in the dawn light. He knows - this time he knows - everything’s going to be okay.

“I think it hurt because in the dream I tell you I love you and that I need you... and then you tell me that’s the problem, and that you need to _not_ need me, and then you leave. And that’s the thing T, I do need you. I always have, I still do.” He spills it all out on one breath, and there it is, that night in Sochi, lying between them.

She blanches, as he knew she would. It had detonated them, that small, overwhelming matter of their need for each other. It had detonated their whole lives.

But that was then. It won’t break them this time. He won’t let it.

Because he understands now. She loves him. And he loves her. She makes him brave.

“Don’t say it, Tess. It’s ok. I get it now. I don’t want you to.”

She’d drawn in a deep breath to say something, and stops short in the middle of trying to find the words.

“I love you, you are it for me. And I need you, Tess, we both know that, there’s no point pretending I don’t. But… I don’t need you to need me. I get it now. I don’t want you ever to feel like you’ve lost yourself, in me or us or anyone or anything, ever. I want you to always feel like you’re enough, a whole complete person, all on your own. I want you to feel like that, and _then_ to want me. To choose me.”

*

_Feel like that, and then want me. Choose me._

She is hopeful amazement.

“And… If that’s all I can give you… If that doesn’t change…” She has to know. If not now, she’ll never be brave enough to ask again. “Is that enough? For you?”

His face breaks open in her favourite smile, that soft, lopsided one that’s always been hers.

“Enough?” He shakes his head in disbelief, just a little, just barely, like the answer is obvious. “That’s everything, Tess.”

And just like that, the little shard of ice glows bright and sprouts.

It sends tiny golden tendrils reaching and stretching and knitting into the walls of each chamber of her heart until all of it is glowing too. It warms her whole chest. It warms everything.

And finally, the little shard melts away. It leaves nothing in its place but a thin shining scar, a memory of all it took to get them here.

She can’t believe this is happening.

“I _do_ choose you. You know that, right? I will always, always choose you.”

“I know, Tess. I swear, I do know.” That smile, again. She thinks she could just die right now and it would have been a life worth living because she got to live in this moment with him.

“And you better believe I choose you, my god,” he says, laughing now, lighter than she’s heard him for a long, long time. “And fuck the stupid nightmare, too. Stupid damn dream can’t hurt us.”

And the moment he says it, beaming at her, she knows he means it. It’s like she can see the power of it evaporating into the air of their bedroom, growing lighter by the minute with the golden dawn.

“Well…” and she will not cry, godammit. No. “That’s alright then.”

She sniffs and clears her throat and pulls back so she can see him properly, gripping his face between her hands, suddenly fierce again. “But I will keep telling you that I choose you until my dying day. You hear me? I will never, ever get tired of telling you that. And I don’t care if that’s sappy, you’re just going to have to get used to it.”

She laughs to keep from crying, and he kisses her, happy and laughing too. All trace of the weight in the darkness is gone.

She loves him like this.

She just loves him, really. Just as he is.

“I think I can learn to live with that,” he kisses her cheek. “But you,” and then her nose, “are gonna get so tired of me,” and her temple, “telling you,” and the crook of her neck, “that I’m yours.”

And with that he flips them over, holding himself above her and kissing her so softly on the mouth.

“Cos it’s gonna be a lot, Tess,” he whispers against her lips. “It’s gonna be all the time. You’re gonna be so sick of me.”

She reaches up to hold his face in her hands and feels like she’s cradling this thing between them, still new and precious, but unbreakable as diamond.

“Inconceivable,” she whispers back.

And then he is kissing her and loving her, until she can’t remember any word but his name.

***

Afterwards, lying across his chest, eyes closed and enjoying the sensation of his fingers in her hair and the sun on her back, she feels him shift beneath her.

“Tess?”

“Hmmph.”

“You awake?”

“Hmm. No.”

“So, I’ve been thinking. And… I think this might actually be a sure thing. You and me. Do you think?”

She smiles against his chest without opening her eyes, and pulls herself tighter against him.

“I think we’re doing okay, yeah.”

She can feel the lurch of his chest as he cranes his neck to try to see her face.

“‘Okay’? I dunno. Pretty perfect, so far, I’d say.”

“No such thing as perfect, Scotty.” She smiles again.

She can practically hear him roll his eyes as he drops back down onto his pillow.

“Pretty _excellent_ , then, Tessa.”

“Yeah, pretty excellent,” she sighs sleepily. “You’re so stuck with me now, Moir. Sucks to be you.”

She can feel his chuckle vibrating against her cheek.

He pulls her close, and returns to tracing the patterns of the sunlight on her back. She can hear the smile in his voice.

“Yeah. Sucks to be me.”

She drifts off in the warm light, and dreams she’s standing atop the tallest constant, looking out over a sunlit bay that’s full of them now, and the calm ocean below.

The water laps gently at coves and beaches in every direction.

They’ve got safe harbours everywhere, now.

Safe harbours everywhere, and nothing but time to explore them all.

 

The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... am I forgiven?


End file.
